Samsung is talking about 800,000 shipped Smartwatch units. Yeah, whatever. No one’s buying them, no one’s talking about them. At least not in my part of the Internet. Here’s the thing. People call Samsung an Apple competitor. Really? Android fans jump to the HTC One now. The Fitbit Force looks more like a smartwatch than the Samsung Smartgear.
I saw “The Italian Job” yesterday. Samsung is the Steve to Apple’s Charlie in the movie. Samsung barely has enough imagination to last it a few years before stealing someone else’s idea.
When you’re trying to break into a new market, an important part of that process is innovation. The ‘thing’ Samsung is dangling in front of us looks like something Casio put out in the 90s. When Tesla came out with an electric car (which is essentially what it is), did they say, let’s make another boring iteration of an electric car that drones like a bee and doesn’t go over 60 mph? No. When Nest made a thermostat, did they make it look like every other thermostat in the market. Not at all.
Why does it seem so hard to innovate? Why does it seem like Samsung cannot look at a device and dream up something different? Maybe because Corporations don’t dream.